


And Everything Nice

by shcherbatskayas



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Character Study, Gen, I'll ruin them, M/M, Mentions of Prostitution, Mentions of Violence, don't let me touch your nice characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-28
Updated: 2016-11-28
Packaged: 2018-09-02 21:20:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8683777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shcherbatskayas/pseuds/shcherbatskayas
Summary: She was so kind and gentle and sweet (and she wanted to take that knife, the one in the bottom right drawer that was right by the set of pastel pink whisks, and stab him until he was nothing but a shrieking sack of meat, begging her for mercy)





	

**Author's Note:**

> It's the Year of Our Lord 2016 and I'm still in HetaHell wtf the fuck. Anyways, I wrote a little character study for my little sunshine sinner, aph Liechtenstein, so enjoy!

Elise was nice. Elise had always been nice. As a child, she had lived with Austria and learned the arts of being a proper young lady, the principal rule of which was that she _always_ had to be nice. She learned how to play the piano, how to speak French, how to run a kingdom, and most importantly, she learned how to lie and lie well. She spoke the truth so rarely in her youngest years that she almost forgot that most people looked down on lying. She lied about _everything_. Lies that hurt people, lies that helped them, lies that were useful, lies that were useless, lies that she told just for fun, lies that she told to see if anyone would catch her, lies she told to see if anyone would even _try_ , and the main reason that it all began was because it was dangerous to tell the truth in the court, and if it was dangerous to do something in court, Elise assumed it must be twice as dangerous elsewhere.

Somewhere along the line, she supposed that she forgot how to tell the truth, but that wasn’t quite accurate. It would be more accurate to say that nobody had ever taught her how to be honest and she had never quite picked it up.

And so when her cutesy kingdom of lies and sugar came crashing down, Elise came crashing down with it. The First World War left her nation poor and weak and defenseless and when she went to Roderich for help (he _always_ helped her if she needed it, he was essentially her _father_ , he was the one who had taught her everything she needed to know and everything she didn’t, he protected her from danger and spoiled her rotten and absolutely adored her), he had turned her down and then turned her out. Practicality, he said. Self-preservation, he said. It had hurt him as badly as it hurt her, he said.

***

Elise laughed when she thought of that while she was selling her fancy dresses, her silver spoons, her scarves and her gloves and her body and her soul for enough money to get her through the week. It hurt him more. It was around that time her laugh became a bit more hollow, her eyes didn’t sparkle quite as much, but nobody thought much of it. Nobody laughed in that time. Nobody smiled. And so nobody noticed the seed of bitterness and anger that got planted in her heart. Nobody noticed it grow.

***

When Vash saved her, Elise was grateful. She had a home and food and someone to care about her, or at least pretend to. She assumed that everyone lied as frequently as she did, so she figured that Vash’s proclamations of brotherly love were lies and that she was there because he was lonely. Elise was alright with that. It was better than being there just to keep up an image, which was what she had been before. It wasn’t a lie when she said that she was thankful for all Vash did for her, it wasn’t even a lie when she said that she loved him too, but God, was he _annoying_. No more court parties for her, no more wine or dancing or suitors allowed. He was just trying to look out for her, he said. He just was trying to protect her, he said.

He wanted to control her. Because he was lonely and thought a taste of freedom would be enough that she would leave forever, that was what Elise knew was the truth. She swallowed her anger and told him that it was alright, that she never liked those things much anyways. Her anger grew on Friday nights when she would see people out and about, drunk and laughing and free. Her anger would almost suffocate her when Vash asked if she was alright, she had been staring out of the window for hours, she looked quite red, but she would swallow it again and say that she thought it was just a fever, that it would run its course. It was a fever of a different sort, one that didn’t ever truly pass, but she had become an expert at keeping it under wraps. 

***

Time passed. Another big war, this time one that she stayed away from. She ended that war significantly richer than everyone else, although her ladylike decorum started to slip as people started to owe her money and then not pay it back. Czechia and Slovakia bore the brunt of its subtle emergence and in a way, they knew her better than anyone else. They knew she wasn’t all sugary-sweet all of the time. They knew that she could be bossy, that she could be cruel, that she had a temper that was truly frightening, but they kept silent on the matter because nobody would ever believe it. 

***

At some point, Roderich started coming around. Elise pretended to love him, pretended that she wanted him and Vash to make up so that they could be a happy and peaceful and united family, pretended like she believed him when he said that it had hurt him to kick her to the curb. Really, she wanted them to make up and then _get out_ , to get out and then _leave her alone_. Austria would sit in her kitchen and eat her pastries and Elise would nod along and fantasize about stabbing him right through the heart and then telling him that it hurt her more to do it than it hurt him to be stabbed. Sometimes, she would laugh for no reason and he would ask her why and Elise would say that she was laughing because she was so happy he was here and that they were together again. She almost wanted to tell him that she was laughing because she was imagining him starving and poor and bloodied and _shrieking_ for mercy that she wouldn’t show. Elise never told him, but when she imagined his horrified face in the hypothetical world where she could speak the truth, she would laugh even more.

And when Roderich and Vash did make up and make out but not get out, she pretended like it was the best thing in the world. When Czechia told her in front of all of the girls that she would be late on her payment _again_ , she said that it was fine. When the other nations asked for favors, asked for advice, asked for money and food and compassion, she would give it freely even though none of them had helped _her_ , they had left her to _rot_ and she planned to do the same to them some day. They would rely on her and trust her and then she would ruin them, ruin them _all_ someday. It was the only thing that brought peace to her heart on warm summer nights where the weight of her lies suffocated her. The thought of their desperation, the thought of their weeping, the thought that they would all suffer like she had suffered and that she would flounce right past them and _laugh_ , that was what calmed her. Elise would scream into pillows on nights like that until her screams turned into laughter that scared off the birds outside her window and would soon scare off the world.


End file.
